Tag Archives: incest

— adj
1. another word for illegal
2. not approved by common custom, rule, or standard: illicit sexual relations For the purposes of this post I am using the latter definition.

The sexual abuse I had endured as a child left me so terrified of my own sexuality and of men that it left me completely disconnected with and at times dissociated from my body. When I finally ended up dating it was nearly all abusive men, active substance using men, and narcissistic men. It seemed strange that over and over it was the wrong guys. Bad luck I thought.

Why couldn’t I have been the girl who got asked out by some nice fellow and progressed in a slow and steady fashion within a relationship? I’ll tell you why because I was a victim of incest at the hands of my brother and it had been going on since I was 8 and it didn’t end until I was in the middle of high school. And by then I wanted to commit suicide.

So when I grew up, I had become THAT girl. You know the one that tells my date my entire life story over a few drinks in under ten minutes and then let’s him finger fuck me underneath the table at the restaurant, while telling him as he is doing this, that I want to take things slow.

Or I have a guy friend who says he’s hoping my recovery moves more quickly because he’d like to fuck me. After a tongue lashing from me, on how I value our friendship, and that we’ve been friends for so long and he can’t do this! I climb right up on his lap, straddle him, kiss him, gently bite his nipples, rhythmically move my hips over his pelvis while my body betrays me as I get wet under my skirt all over his jeans.

Oh wait, here comes the shame again, along with guilt. Why couldn’t I have just tongue lashed him and left it there? What’s wrong with me.

After restaurant guy finger fucked me, I hid in my apartment for weeks every time he rang my buzzer. So much shame. Eventually he didn’t come around anymore, Thank God. When you couple shame and guilt, this wedding along with a lack of ability to dialogue about your emotions… You spend your life either running or hiding. Building thicker walls to keep people out so you don’t get hurt again.

My shrink says lots of incest survivors are at higher risk for developing sexual problems and problems with setting adequate boundaries overall. When your body is not your own as a child, because your brother has access to you 24/7 you don’t ever have a “no,” to his sexual advances. You can never escape.

As an adult it was quite an easy transition for me to slide into the worldofBDSM, fetish, and kink .

I was too busy figuring out how to stay alive amidst trauma in childhood and adolescence and I never learned the healthy boundaries needed to navigate adulthood. So the cycle repeated.

I’m a walking talking paradox. I really DO want to be the girl who goes slow and have healthy boundaries AND also, I don’t. I crave that which is taboo, and sometimes I recoil from that which is taboo.

I think back to Stanley Kubrick’s film, A Clockwork Orange. If I’m wired to respond sexually in a maladaptive and deviant way for so long, what are the odds I can re-wire now? There is a saying that once a cucumber has become a pickle, it can never go back to being a cucumber again.

Complex trauma has left a wound on me that I don’t know will ever heal. Or maybe it’s that there’s so much scar tissue I just need to get used to that “new normal” of who I’ve become.

Complex trauma is still a relatively new field of psychology. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder. (C-PTSD) results from enduring complex trauma.

Complex trauma is ongoing or repeated interpersonal trauma, where the victim is traumatized in captivity, and where there is no perceived way to escape. Ongoing child abuse is captivity abuse because the child cannot escape. Domestic violence is another example. Forced prostitution/sex trafficking is another.

In my particular case, I was a victim of childhood incest. It is the hardest thing to type that sentence, harder still to say it out loud. I want to delete the sentence and delete “it” from my history. Additionally, there was heavy-handed corporal punishment which by today’s standards would be considered physical abuse. There was definite emotional abuse and at times neglect. Continual domestic violence pervaded my childhood home. My home did not often feel like the safe place it should.

Later in adulthood, I was the victim of domestic violence within my two major long-terms relationships. I don’t know that I even recognized it happening as such it seemed so familiar. If that makes sense.

All of my life I have struggled with low self-esteem. Underneath my low self-esteem belies a darker feeling . There is this deep sense of shame I have carried since as long as I can remember.

When a person is ruled by toxic shame it interferes with their ability to accept positive regard. For in childhood they internalized the belief of not being worthy of being loved or given any attention.

It dawned on me today as I couldn’t look into the mirror, that I just hate myself because I’m ashamed of me.

I wonder if this shame will ever leave. I’ve got a new shrink I’ve been seeing for about 9 months. I’ll call her Lee. One can’t help but feel disillusioned after 20 years in/out of therapy. I’ve ditched seeing Lee the past month. Made up some excuse or other. I mean everyone needs a mental health day from the mental health provider. Oh wait this can’t be treatment resistance this soon can it? I am feeling vulnerable because we are past the point of rapport building, and she’s a quick study. She sees through my best defense mechanisms, and is trying to dig deeper and I’m running like hell.

There’s no shame in investing in a sturdy paper bag to wear over my head to hide myself, right? Wearing bags are so much easier than facing your own demons. ‘Cause Lord knows I’m hoping for a loophole.

When I was only eight years old I remember walking around the neighborhood just before dark. I would peer into the homes just around suppertime. I could smell wonderful things cooking as they wafted through the air. I would occasionally stop and see a family sitting down to eat through their front window. I’d stop and stand there, eyes transfixed. “Could this be what a family is like?” I thought. They seemed so peaceful, happy even, smiling as they ate together. There was no belt on their kitchen table. They’re allowed to talk during dinner.

To be loved, I wanted that so badly……. that it actually ached inside my little chest.

I knew I wasn’t cute enough, smart enough, or good enough. I held fast to the idea that one of my teachers might “see” how badly I wanted rescuing from my home. If I just was nice enough, they might take me home in their back pocket and give me a new life. But…. that never did happen.

No one ever knew the shit that went on in my house behind the picket white fence.

Months turned to years and my fantasy of finding a “home”, someone to adopt
me and rescue me from the hellish existence took on new form. As I entered
womanhood, I stumbled rather curiously into my own untapped potential of
sexuality.

However sex to became a perversion, a remnant of my past, that I wanted
to stay buried. Wreckage of painful childhood memories, its unspeakable trauma and hidden scars, left sexuality for me inexplicably fused with terror.

Men looked at me and seemingly wanted me or so I thought. The opportunity for love came rushing to the forefront again. But I was a quick study and inherently knew, they didn’t want me, but what was between my legs. And so began a deep-seated anger. I resented men. For I wanted their love, their affection and they only wanted sex.

Sex; used to hurt me as a child.
Used as a game, a weapon, to exploit me, humiliate me, abuse me.

How on earth would I ever find a home now? The broken child trapped inside still in search of love and safety she never found. How on earth I pondered would I ever find my way there now?

I hated my body, it had betrayed me.

I hated myself for being such an unlovable damaged piece of shit. Twisted dreams of going home, that shouldn’t exist any longer. Is there a place for the woman-girl I am?

My dream of finding love, of finding home seemed as elusive as it ever had before, and fading fast….